115/230 was never standard **to supply** in Ontario! It was the result of
long lines and voltage drop that was acceptable to the regulating bodies for
customer delivery voltage (+/- 10% = 108-132Vac) HEPCO didn't care much in
the rural. They were the chief cook, bottle washer and the hydro police.

The rural lines are so long and so poor at times that the voltage can be
pushed up a bit with the usage of capacitors at the customer ends. Ontario
Hydro was notorious for this as they used the depreciating copper concept
and could only feed from one end of the line. This usually worked except for
the long outages caused by not being able to feed from both ends in an
emergency (**** the rural customer). Anyway, the power factor correction
capacitors raised the voltage during **ALL** times so that when the load was
light the poor ******* at the end of the long skinny run of copper had
voltage up to 140-150 volts! This wasn't acceptable but they closed their
eyes to it and got the farmers to buy high voltage (rough service) bulbs.
Motors liked it but bulbs didn't.

Again...yes you got 135Vac at your house but not by design or on purpose. On
pole tapchangers had similar problems. To correct the 90Vac for the poor
******* at the end of the long line up to 105Vac (barely livable) the pole
top tapchanger would step up the voltage by it's limit...usually 10, 12 or
15% boost. The poor ******* across the street got the 135Vac into his house
too. Again, not intentionally.

Many older homes in Kit had the old 120V 2W service. In one lady's home as
I walked from room to room she screwed in lightbulbs and walked back and
unscrewed the last rooms bulb! She had ***a single *** 25amp main screw in
fuse for a main fuse! Then they proceed to bitch about how their bills have
been outrageous at $21 for the two months and can't afford this nonsense!
LOL, Scary! She unplugged her cone heater, by her rocking chair, when she
wanted to use the 120V stove!

Most of Wilmot farms houses had the old 50/70A breakers in them. It was 50
ampere on each 120V leg and 70A total on a 240V loads. Most are gone now,
but I have been out of that part of the business since the 80s.

As an aside:
In later years OH started distributing 3phase 4W transmission lines.
Grounding a neutral every chance you get becomes a problem with high voltage
transmission lines but it the standard practice. Any voltage drop on a
transmission line gives a voltage drop in the neutral due to any unbalance
(neutral) and on a 4W system. On a 27.6kV system you can have a few hundred
volts, easily! Now tie that neutral to one end of Wilmot and the other end
to the far end of Wellesley and you have a (reduced by parallel earth path)
few hundred volts across the county, in the ground. This is what they call
"tingle voltage" As a rural boy (I think) I am sure you would be familiar
with cows dying of thirst after they got a zap in the yap from the water
trough, a few times. If you fix it, there, the next farm gets it worse. Some
get shocks in the pee-pee when taking a shower between the shower head and
the metal tub...LOL Some other story time...LOL

Have a good one!

---------------
wrote in message ...

On Wed, 10 Aug 2011 00:09:57 -0400, "Josepi"
wrote:


115/230 was standard in many areas of Ontario in the '60s

Rural light bulbs were rated at 135 for a reason. The line voltage in
many rural distribution systems were straight 135 AC - not center
tapped dual voltage. The DISTRIBUTION was 135 volts - very few
transformers - and therefore wide voltage variations with load. Each
farm might have a 30 amp servive - 50 amps was HUGE. Under full load,
the branch circuit voltages could drop to 110, and under light load,
the full 135 was present - so the bulbs needed to be 123 rated or they
would pop very early in their projected life.

Network system supplies used in apartments and downtown Kit. run 125, 216
in
order to satisfy the specs using 2 out of 3 legs on a 3ph 4w system into
residences to reduce the conductor size to deliver it to multiple units in
close proximity.